I've been reading/watching reviews of Renegades whenever I can find them, and I keep coming back to the same thought:
Should this be judged as a "fan film" or as a professional production?...
They sold it as a pilot worthy of sharing with a network. That implies a level of quality beyond a pure fan film and invites a different degree of scrutiny. As I've said before, you can't say "we're so pro" and then expect to be judged by less than pro standards.
and in that spirit
All the scenes with Chekhov's great-granddaughter should have been left on the cutting room floor - added nothing of significance at all.
I agree. What makes those scenes worse (beyond how poorly written they are) is knowing both she and her friend are played by Tim Russ' daughter and Sky Conway's daughter. Hello, shoehorn!
that explains alot, I felt watching it, they were in fact there to give Walter something to do, I guess his great great grand daughter, hints at the bigger villain we dont know about, but thats is about it, and we didnt need that given the speech at the end about how Lexxa had been targeted in the past.
Moving away from this, as it seems im picking up on a common theme, the Renegades come together quite well, the crew of Icarus do seem well bonded, and by the end of it, you actually care, Robert Picardo seem wasted (but again there is reason for that.) I could certainly see the characters being expanded and built up on, over the run of a TV show.
Going into this, and looking at the list of "stars" as in people from the TV series, lowest on my list was Manu Intiraymi as Icheb, I have spent no time at all pondering what happened to the Borg kids, but actually he really stands out in this for me.
Side note: the above suggests that I ranked Admiral Owen Paris higher than Icheb, but that is more down to the fact, I had all but forgotten about him, other than as an abstract notion that Tom had a father at in a couple of episode. (sorry Richard)
Going back to Starfleet for a moment Captain Alvarez, whilst I generally dont like it when Archer gets a mention in Star Trek, I would rather he was forgotten, the USS Archer is a fine ship, who suffers from the same problem as the Icarus, lovely outside visuals, but rubbish sets (Lexxa getting her captains chair from an office supply store) however I enjoyed the cat and mouse between Captain Alvarez and the Renegades, and would like to see more of that in the future, people might say he is a bit safe, a boy scout but as the mirror to the Renegades, that is what is needed, someone who stands (almost too much) for all the good in the federation, not the dark shadowy world we are presented with.
Some general points, why is Chekov just hanging around with Renegades, who just drop by his office, and hang out, like no one is to question it? at least Tuvok keeps to the shadows. Is the shadowy element of the Federation not watching him?
Garis (Vic Mignogna) is dead? ok so maybe we need him to play Kirk on Continues but why bring him along after Lexxa left the prison if he does little more than remind us that Cardassians and Bajorans do not get along
the Syphon, they seem a little wasted here, they are built up ago, but by the end they seem totally defeated, and I dont really know if I want them back.
Some previous posts have mentioned some poor FX and CGI, its certainly true, whilst star ship design and the space dog fights all excellent, landscape and background shots are all quite poor, even by the standard of a pilot poor.
So this pilot does more or less as expected it sets up the Renegades crew, and moves the attention from the federation and star fleet to a group of rouges, because honestly Starfleet is so clouded in shadows other than Tuvok is the least interesting part in this, but maybe we needed the idea of the safety blanket, whilst we got to know the Renegades.
Sure its change of tone for TOS, and TNG Star Trek, heck DS9 never went this far, and if this was to go to a series, you have to ask, if this what people want from Star Trek? a world where criminals are the good guys and the federation are the bad? this idea exists in Star Wars and Firefly, but is this what we want from Trek, to see humanity's best (which is how the Federation and Starfleet has been shown up to now), become the bad guys?
Finally the implosion device looked more like something out of Star Gate, and the Renegades crew is not 100 miles away from the new crew of the Andromeda, we should avoid an episode where the Renegades end up serving on the Archer as crew to Alvarez.
I have some more nit picks, which are way to nit picky to post, so ill pass on those.
)
All I could think though was Phil Coulson's similar-yet-played-for-laughs entrance in the first episode of Agents of Shield. "Sorry, it was so dark back there, I couldn't resist. I think there's a bulb out."
